Jane Goodall’s lifelong studies into chimpanzees began six decades ago, when as a 26-year-old she set foot on the shores of Gombe Stream National Park along Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania, equipped with nothing but a notebook, a pencil and a pair of secondhand binoculars.

But it was later, at a 1986 conference on chimpanzees in Chicago, that she would experience a pivotal moment in her work. Learning about threats to chimpanzees, including the meat trade and their unethical treatment in some laboratories, shifted her focus toward a big-picture, holistic approach to the conservation of the species she had come to know so intimately.

“I just knew I had to try to do something,” she recalled at a luncheon Thursday, during a three-day return visit to Chicago. “That conference changed my whole li

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